Uncertainty
An annotated collection of 6 books, papers & articles on uncertainty, spanning 1921 to 2018. Featuring works by Frank Knight, George J. Stigler, George A. Akerlof and 3 more — each with editorial commentary oriented to digital product practice.
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit
Knight's distinction is clean and consequential: risk is measurable probability; uncertainty is not. Insurance handles risk; entrepreneurship handles uncertainty. Profit exists precisely because some situations cannot be…
The Economics of Information
Stigler's opening move in what became the economics of information: if information is costly to acquire, then price dispersion in a market is not a sign of irrationality but the rational equilibrium outcome of search beh…
The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism
Akerlof's foundational demonstration that information asymmetry alone can destroy a market. Using the used car trade as his model — where sellers know whether a car is good or a "lemon" but buyers cannot tell — he shows…
The Economics of Information: An Exposition
Arrow, the Nobel laureate who formalised the economics of uncertainty and information asymmetry, distills his life's work into a short exposition. The central argument is that markets for information do not behave like m…
Six Rules for Effective Forecasting
Saffo, a long-time futurist at the Institute for the Future, reduces forecasting to six rules that most planners violate: define a cone of uncertainty rather than a single prediction, look for the S-curve, embrace the th…
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
Duke, a former professional poker player turned decision-science teacher, argues that the quality of a decision and the quality of its outcome are different things, and that treating them as the same is the single most e…